hello guys,
is a project like Second-Life online vr world, but more simplified, doable with Unity.
cheers,
Firas.
Well it depends. If you are willing to do a bunch of C# network programming, then anything is possible. Currently in Unity 1.x easy networking is not included, but it has been hinted for a 2.x release.
Some example networking scripts have been put on the Unify Wiki:
http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=Script_Archive#Networking_Scripts
Good luck!
AGhost
Who’s going to copy and paste the “If you have to ask, you don’t have what it takes to make an MMO right now” speech?
Sry man, but I really hate those kind of replies. They do nothing more than kill people’s dreams. I am not saying you are trying to do that, I know you well enough to know you are not like that. 
He may be well aware that he is going to have a lot to learn, but he is not sure where to spend his time. Can Unity handle such a large world? Can Unity handle the networking aspects? Can Unity load arbitrary level and model files at runtime? Or should I look for another engine that would be more suited for my plans? These are questions people have, although they may not always know how to ask yet. They just want a starting point.
And if he knew how to create an MMO he would be doing so already, so let’s help him learn how, not tell him he doesn’t have what it takes to do it.
Anyway, no offence meant to anyone. Just a pet-peeve of mine.
-Jeremy
thanx a lot guys for replying,
thanx AGhost for reassuring me.
thanx Lallander for the useful post.
thanx very much jeremyace, you said it all. All what I’m trying to know : does Unity give you the potential to do this so that I might concentrate on Unity and plan with it or should I have to search for something else for this purpose and use Unity for all the rest that is doable in Unity.
I was thrilled to know that Unity can do it all (with the proper effort).
thanx StarManta for being honest, I’m a sport, and I know that u were trying to point me out where to start to reach something with the size of what I’m posting. But it is not something like Second-Life that I’m trying to achieve. It’s only that I want some features that exist in Second-Life which I will require for some future plans.
so can I conclude guys that all this is doable in Unity? so that I can concentrate on it? I would be thrilled to get a definite yes for an answer.
thanx for all the encouragement,
yours,
Firas.
This is debatable. On one hand, I have seen people create some pretty large worlds (I think there was a good nature generator demo from awhile back that had a huge world in it). On the other, larger worlds require better hardware in order to maintain reasonable preformance. If you are designing this for a specific purpose (i.e. architectual walkthroughs or product demos) that you are only running on specific hardware, you could design the world around its limitations. On the other hand, for a game, you may want to try to divide the world up. I like the World of Warcraft style where they load seperate areas and keep the individual open areas smaller.
Through .NET implementation, Unity can support networking aspects.
See: http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=Script_Archive#Networking_Scripts
As stated above, this would most likely be doable in Unity. But with that said, I would try for a small scale example before embarking on a huge project such as what is seen in Second-Life. Try just making a small room with the networking and features that you want before trying a large world like Second-Life. I’m sure the community will be more than willing to help you out if you hit any snags!
AGhost
thanx a lot guys,
thanx again AGhost for reassuring me.
keep the good work ;),
Firas.
i’d say so. with unity being a relatively young engine and the complexity of MMO’s being what it is, there isn’t much i could point you to as examples yet, but in addition to what Aghost mentioned, which is here i think:
http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=3336
there is also Serious Games palestine:
http://unity3d.com/gallery/main/editorshot.jpg.html
not exactly an MMO, but definitly large complex - perhaps they could say something about their experience.
but as starmanta implied, this is no small task (with any engine) - massive skill determination required ; )
That was probably mine…about 80 square km or so. (And it could have been a lot bigger than that!) There isn’t much problem with having big areas and still maintaining decent framerates, depending on the sort of detail and tradeoffs you want to make, and the techniques you use. A much bigger issue would be getting the whole multiplayer online thing working, especially since networking at the moment isn’t trivial to do.
–Eric
With Unity you can usually pull anything off with a little creativity.
With the access to the .NET package and the level of information and control that is exposed by the Unity Engine to the scripting engine, you can pull most game-code related stuff off, sometimes with a little “thinking outside the box”.
The good thing is, when you get stuck, you can post your question here as there are a lot of very helpful people here who do things in extremely different ways. As long as you have been trying hard yourself, and seem to really want to learn, you will get help or at least some good ideas.
As it has been said by everyone, this wont be trivial though. Like AGhost said, start small to build a better grasp of the .NET networking classes, and basic networking in general first.
I also recommend you research game networking/multiplayer on Google, gamedev.net, gamasutra.com, flipcode.com for some older articles, etc. Don’t pressure yourself to understand all that, but research of this kind will greatly help you to ask the right questions to the right people.
Also plan how your game is going to behave while online before you start writing any net code specifically for it. (design doc)
Always paint the big picture first, then go in and flesh out the individual modules of the picture.
It is far easier to re-paint a small section of the picture to get it to work with the grand concept than it is to change the grand concept and all the other sections of the picture to conform to your small section.
HTH,
-Jeremy
I had this huge MMO planned that was going to be awsome and complex and the reason i got into game design at all was to do this one huge plan, which is still a goal of mine
But more and more i see its not something you can do casually, or even successfully ( depending on your definition of success)
with a shitload of studying and learning ( and praying for good online in unity 2.0 ) you could do this, will it catch on, who knows, because the unfortunate thing about MMO’s is that you have to have a large group playing it, its either got alot of users, or none because new user’s log on and see empty friends list
i have no idea if your proficient at codeing and game design in general, but if you are then just start making char’s and doing the coding thats not dependent on networking, if you want it to be successful and a huge hit like second life, then theres no forum member in this one or any other that could tell you if it would work
making great works of art and pleasing the consumer are VERY different
so in short
Possible to do: yes
Hard to do: very
Will it work: Nobody knows, and dont let anyone else tell you different
thanx a lot morgansaysthis for the encouragement.
you got that all right.
any way it is pleasing to know that it is doable in unity so that I can concentrate on one game engine and master it. I am even more pleased that this game engine is unity.
I believe that unity will support more complex tasks in the future, where our plans and the new features can meet.
good luck to all,
cheers,
Firas.
hello everyone,
came across this old thread and would like your views if the current version of Unity is better equipped to handle MMO virtual world a.k.a. Secondlife in terms of basic in-world interactions i.e. online chat, audio / video presentation, virtual meeting / conference, product demo etc. fyi, i work for a property company and interested in setting up a mini-secondlife virtual world to showcase properties as well as to provide a virtual interactions among landlords, tenants and prospects.
appreciate your advice…many thanks!
More than do-able:
http://www.fusionfall.com/splashpage.html
You may want to have a look at:
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page
In any case, Unity is more than able to build a client or browser based interface, the trick is getting your backend solution to work (note: if you don’t have the skills to build a game in house, and you’re serious in this effort, look to contract someone to build it…)
Hope this helps,
Galen
thanks for the response and info.
However, for large terrain (i.e. > 10km by 10km), will there be performance issue if i populated the world with vast landscape and hundreds of high rise buildings?
BTW, are fusionfall and opensimulator written in Unity? cant seem to find the info on their websites.
cheers!
Unity supports large terrains, there are techniques for improved performance of course 
.
Fusionfall uses Unity as the client piece, I don’t know what their MMO backend engine is. Opensimular is not Uniy (as far as I know) but could serve as the engine for what you describe, there are others…
Thanks,
Galen
Thanks Galen for your kind response and great to know that Unity is capable of creating huge terrain and MMO virtual world. I just bought indie and will dig in to learn as much as possible from this wonderful community. cheers!